The Jewish people have no distinct racial or biological identity—and they came from the Caucasus, not Palestine. So says Tel Aviv University professor Shlomo Sand, who admits that he wrote The Invention of the Jewish People in order “to undercut the Jews’ claims to the land of Israel by demonstrating that they do not constitute ‘a people, with a shared racial or biological past.” (The real Jews, of course, being the Palestinian Arab villagers who “descended from the original Jewish farmers.”)
According to the New York Times —which provides a more favorable view of this crackpot than he deserves:
Since Professor Sand’s mission is to discredit Jews’ historical claims to the territory, he is keen to show that their ancestry lines do not lead back to ancient Palestine. He resurrects a theory first raised by 19th-century historians, that the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe, to whom 90 percent of American Jews trace their roots, are descended from the Khazars, a Turkic people who apparently converted to Judaism and created an empire in the Caucasus in the eighth century. This idea has long intrigued writers and historians. In 1976, Arthur Koestler wrote “The Thirteenth Tribe” in the hopes it would combat anti-Semitism; if contemporary Jews were descended from the Khazars, he argued, they could not be held responsible for Jesus’ Crucifixion.[ . . . ]
Professor Sand accuses Zionist historians from the 19th century onward — the very same scholars on whose work he bases his case — of hiding the truth and creating a myth of shared roots to strengthen their nationalist agenda. He explains that he has uncovered no new information, but has “organized the knowledge differently.”
So not only did they create a commonly-accepted history and mythos, but they invented an entire race of people that didn’t really exist. Is there anything Zionists can’t do when they get together in collusion?
